d the air with gritty dust; the sky, though
cloudless, grew murkier every day. Then the wind shifted to the south,
and the sky grew darker yet with surging heaps of clouds, and at last
down came the late November rain; and next morning Miss Northrop could
see, like a miraculous creation of the night, up and down every
east-and-west street, a range of azure mountains along either horizon,
snow-crowned, clear-cut, against an exquisite blue sky. Every two or
three weeks the surge of clouds would come rolling up with the south
wind, and the rain would come down in torrents for days, till the
Sacramento, yellow with mud, roared level with its banks; and then the
storm would break away, and there would be a week or two of blue sky
and brilliant air and green earth.

One Sunday in March, between the early and the latter rains, Miss
Northrop and Will Strong walked out together several miles over the
plain. The gravel had long disappeared under green burclover and
_filaria_, thickly dotted with the little yellow clover blossoms, the
lilac ones of the _filaria_, and with small blue gilias. The flocks
and herds had been driven down from the mountains where they spend
their summers and autumns, and the air was full of the bleating of
lambs. Up and down either horizon, converging toward the north, were
the long ranks of the Sierras and Coast Range, deep blue, ruggedly
tipped with white peaks of all shapes--the Lassen Buttes, the Yallo
Balleys, and many a lesser one. Northward, in the interval between the
ranges, miles and miles away, the solitary peak of Shasta rose above
the dark oak-knolls, sharp-white from base to tip, against a stainless
sky. They sat down on the warm clover, beside a noisy yellow stream
that ran full to its banks on its way to the Sacramento. Winifred
pushed back her hat, dropped her hands in her lap, and let her senses
be played upon by the delicious air, the blue and white of mountains
and sky and clouds, the luminous green, the rushing of water close by,
and the bleating of flocks in the distance. It gave Will a good chance
to watch her face--the sweetness of the mouth; the nobility of the
level brows; the frankness of the eyes; the soft wave of her hair.
There was a marked sadness in her face in repose; to wonder why, was
to transgress the code of loyal humility that Will set himself; he had
not even considered it due chivalry to speculate, much less ask, as to
the reason of so amazing a phenomenon as her p